A cholesteric crystal display device may form a planar texture that reflects extraneous light or a focal conic texture that absorbs extraneous light depending on an application state of an electric field. Even if an electric field is not maintained in a certain state, the cholesteric crystal display device can maintain such a state due to its bistability. Therefore, the cholesteric crystal display device with bistability has been used as an electronic paper display device.
The cholesteric crystal display device can display various colors depending on a pitch of molecules contained in a liquid crystal layer and a wavelength of incident light. There has been known Patent Document 1 (U.S. Pat. No. 6,654,080 entitled “Stacked color liquid crystal display device”) in which three or more liquid crystal layers displaying different colors are stacked in a cholesteric crystal display device for displaying colors. Further, there has been known Patent Document 2 (U.S. Pat. No. 7,864,285 entitled “Color cholesteric liquid crystal display device comprising a unitary structure having a plurality of stripe wall structures, a straight seal line, and a solid bulk region made of a same material”) in which colors are displayed by forming R, G, and B patterns on the same plane.
In a method described in Patent Document 1, each of the stacked layers reflects light. Thus, the method of Patent Document 1 has an advantage of high light reflectivity over a method described in Patent Document 2. However, the method of Patent Document 1 has a disadvantage in that numerous electrodes and driver ICs are needed to drive the stacked layers. Further, the method of Patent Document 1 has another disadvantage in that three or more liquid crystal panels need to be manufactured individually and stacked to be suitable for respective pixels, and, thus, a manufacturing process is complicated. The method of Patent Document 2 has a disadvantage in that three colors are displayed on the same plane and an area assigned to each color is small, and, thus, reflectivity and an aspect ratio are decreased.